Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Stitches West 2015

Every year for the last four, I've gone to Stitches West, which is described on their FAQ as a "fiber experience" but is really just a huge yarn/knitting/crochet/weaving/spinning/etc. convention. Usually I come back with a huge bag of yarn and various associated sundries. This year was no exception!

This year the only yarn I got was some lace from Sincere Sheep, and some 2-ply and worsted from Miss Babs. I also picked up some cool knit blockers from Knitter's Pride, a shawl pin, and surprisingly, some sewing pins.
Stitches West takes up the entire Santa Clara Convention Center. The market is basically the entire lower floor, with classes upstairs. I've never taken classes, but the market is so huge that it takes a full day to explore.

This year, my friend Molly and I went through, and here are a few photographs from the market floor. Fair warning: this is a very sewing-sparse post!

Some gorgeous fair isle samples at RedFish DyeWorks:

We found this rainbow weaving sample at another booth and... I just... Wow.

I wish we had room for a real weaving loom. My Knitter's Looms are great, but really aren't well designed for anything beyond plain weave with DK or worsted weight yarn. This piece was a superbly even twill weave with a super high DPI.

Bead knitting is almost as trendy as weaving nowadays. Check out this bead booth:

Beads! Beads! Beads!

Demos are common on the market floor, but can be hard to catch. Luckily we walked by in the middle of a demo of nuno felting:

Last year, Molly and I saw a demo with silk hankies, and within a year we both had worked with some. How much do you want to bet that we'll have some nuno felting done before the next Stitches?

I forgot where we found these, but I loved the colours in these knitted shawls.

There was one booth that had a sign saying, "PLEASE TOUCH" and tons of roving and raw wool. Here's Molly digging in:

They also had samples of fleece from different sheep.

One was a rambouillet, and though Molly and I had never heard of that type of sheep before, they are super cute and their fleece is very soft!

Here is Molly with a new stuffed friend:

And holy mother of wool, after five hours of going through the entire conference floor this was our stash:

We unintentionally stuck to a fairly blue and muted colour palette. We also bought a lot of yarn, but trust me when I say we barely made a dent in the entire convention! The majority of it was from Miss Babs, though there was also a Webs visit for Noro, my Sincere Sheep, some cross stitch samplers for Molly, and other accessories.